Sunn O))) & Ulver – ‘Terrestrials’

Sunn O))) & Ulver - 'Terrestrials'

Score

36 minutes and three tracks of rich, enveloping, meditative heaviness

In their earliest incarnations, American duo Sunn O))) – pictured – played fearsome, bowel-loosening metallic drone, and Norway’s Ulver were all about shrieking black metal. Both would have likely spat in your eye if you talked of “artistic progression”, yet both grew to fully embrace it. A decade of loose connections between the two culminates in ‘Terrestrials’, 36 minutes and three tracks of rich, enveloping, meditative heaviness. While your speakers are still liable to rattle, especially when Sunn O)))’s Greg Anderson drops depth-charge bass on ‘Western Horn’, extremity for extremity’s sake is conspicuous by its absence. Fourteen-minute closer ‘Eternal Return’, notably, locks down an atmosphere that’s like the //Twin Peaks// soundtrack stretched almost to near breaking point, and is also kinda beautiful.